RIGHT TO REPLY

How you can help to curb the over-mighty IRS

Exclusive: Lord Monckton to Americans: 'It's your Constitution. Use it or lose it'

Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, high priest of climate skepticism, advised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, wrote leaders for the Yorkshire Post, was editor of the Catholic paper The Universe, managing editor of the Telegraph Sunday Magazine, assistant editor of Today, and consulting editor of the Evening Standard. He invented the million-selling "Eternity Puzzles," "Sudoku X" and a promising treatment for infections. See the Science & Public Policy Institute.

The very concept of liberty for which your Founding Fathers strove is now regarded as right-wing.

The hard left, now in control almost everywhere, no longer make any pretense at respect for the U.S. Constitution or for the freedoms it was once supposed to guarantee.

They are openly turning America into a Communist country with institutions many times more expensively tyrannical than the amiable tea-tax collectors of good King George.

Two such institutions are the EPA and the IRS. Each of these now functions in a manner virtually indistinguishable from departments of the Soviet state.

I have just reread the judgment of the Federal District Court in North Carolina condemning the EPA for having fabricated a bogus case against passive smoking, just as it has now fabricated a bogus case against carbon dioxide.

Each of these flagrant departures from scientific rationality occurred because the EPA wanted to enrich and empower itself at the expense of everyone else, and because it knew Congress would be too lazy to stop it.

There is not much we can do about the EPA except hope that the Supreme Court will eventually strike down the CO2 nonsense, and that a Republican president will simply abolish the EPA outright and debar any of its employees from ever holding any federal administrative post ever again.

But there is something we can do about the IRS.

The unlawfully partisan political campaign the IRS waged against tea-party groups to delay their registrations and hence to prevent them from functioning effectively during the 2012 election may have handed Obama a victory to which he was not entitled.

The IRS got away with that fundamental breach of the iron obligation upon all departments of government to act impartially as between the political parties. The reason: the left-leaning mainstream news media simply looked the other way. Nearly all of them simply did not report what the IRS had done – and had admitted doing.

So the IRS is going one step further. It is proposing to issue new rules – in effect making new laws even though the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress alone – that would give it the absolute right to decide in an arbitrary fashion which political advocacy groups will be given tax-exempt status and which will not.

And we already know which groups the IRS will allow and which they will prevent.

The proposed rules for 501(c)(4) groups will outlaw as “candidate-related political activities” all grass-roots lobbying, candidate forums or debates, voter registration campaigns or guides.

Even issue advocacy – the very purpose of 501(c)(4) organizations – will be forbidden (or, rather, only permitted provided that the organization forfeits its tax-exempt status).

Under the proposed regulations, it will no longer be permissible for any 501(c)(4) entity to gain tax exemption if it engages in any of the newly forbidden activities.

In effect, the IRS is proposing to abolish 501(c)(4) status altogether. Once the 501(c)(4)s are gone, who will hold public officials accountable? Who will speak for the grass roots?

Taking so radical a step would be acceptable only if Congress rather than the IRS were to change the law, and only if one could count on the IRS to act impartially as between the parties when deciding which groups should and should not be granted tax exemption.

But the IRS can no longer be relied upon to act impartially. It has already shown itself willing to favor the left.

Its latest move is yet another power-grab by the already over-mighty State against once-free citizens. You can, and should, help to stop it.

The IRS is going through the motions of holding a public consultation before it brings in the new rules. And this is where you come in.

The reference code you need to enter in the form is IRS REG-134417-13.

Once you have entered that code, you can write comments. But the comments will not count unless you include your name and address.

In your comments, you should demand that the IRS hold public hearings throughout the nation before promulgating the new rules.

You should also make the point that citizens’ groups should not have to pay taxes on protected First Amendment activities such as publishing voting records, grass-roots lobbying and voter registration.

It’s your Constitution. Use it or lose it. Make your comments now. If enough people comment, the IRS can be persuaded to back off. And you will have struck an important blow for the freedom that the left so viscerally hates and fears.